Aavin hot milk in cold storage?

While Aavin is choosing sites to locate 16 modern parlours in the city with the first planned at Virugambakkam at an estimated Rs.1.76 crore to dispense their products, a pending issue is that hot milk is available only in Aavin-managed parlours and not in many franchisee outlets. Sources on condition of anonymity said the problem was that “there was no profit in hot milk.” While milk used for this cost Rs.57 a litre, 120 ml had to be given in Aavin provided cups to customers at Rs.7 a cup, leaving them no profit. Also, franchisees have to purchase sugar themselves which further added to their financial burden. 

Aavin run parlours are provided both milk and sugar by Aavin federation. To overcome this impasse, franchisees either do not sell hot milk on some pretext or use non Aavin cups of 80 – 90 ml capacity to sell milk to customers who are generally unaware of the quantity of milk they are to get. 

This naturally created problems for franchisees during visits by Aavin vigilance personnel, when staff have either to pay a penalty for shortmeasuring their customers or grease their palms, which adds to their financial burden. Though Aavin products get good response from customers, not many of the latter are aware of the hot milk issue. 

For example, badam milk at Rs.10 a cup is a hot draw with customers specially in the beach fronted Aavin parlour in the Ezhilagam campus. When contacted Aavin MD Sunil Paliwal said he would look into the issue as it had not yet come to his notice. Action was taken a year ago against units selling milk in non-Aavin cups. “I have not come across this issue,” he added.